Lulu, who had resumed her seat, looked up wondering at the clouded brow and unintelligibly muttered words. He smiled, subduing his emotion by a strong effort of will.
"You have not told me yet what are your plans for to-day—ah! here comes my lady aunt. Dear madam, will you kindly designate what are your plans for to-day, and command your humble servant?"
Mrs. Conway smiled her brightest smile on her idol.
"Let me see," glancing at her watch: "only ten o'clock. You can be off for your morning cigar and stroll on the avenue—when you come back we will have decided."
He rose, handsome, smiling, debonaire, but desperately ennuied, and glad, if truth must be told, to get away. Small talk was a bore to him just then, in his perturbed mood. He picked up Lulu's embroidered handkerchief that she had carelessly let fall to the floor, and presenting it with a jaunty "by-by," went his way followed by their admiring eyes. He was his aunt's acknowledged idol; Lulu's unconscious one.
Mrs. Conway plunged at once into the subject of amusements for the day.
"Let us see—there is Mrs. R's reception at two—we musn't fail them. You will see the creme de la creme there, my dear. When we get away we will have a drive over to the little city of Alexandria; at six, dinner; at eight, the opera; at twelve, you and Bruce shall have an hour for the German at Mrs. Morton's ball, and then—well, home again."
"Quite an attractive programme," smiled her companion, from the depths of the "sleepy hollow."
Mrs. Conway smiled musingly, as she fixed her dark eyes on the pattern of autumn-tinted leaves that trailed over the velvet carpet.